AT&T Suit Has Cold-War Roots

By

Siobhan Gorman

Updated March 6, 2008 12:01 am ET

WASHINGTON -- Behind the scenes in the tussle over whether telephone companies can be sued for cooperating with warrantless government surveillance is a 35-year-old computer engineer who lives outside San Francisco.

Tash Hepting,
of Hepting v. AT&T, had remained silent as Washington hashes out an impasse over whether to grant immunity to phone companies, as the White House wishes, which would kill this lawsuit and the 37 others.

In his first interview since filing suit, Mr. Hepting says he did so, with the help of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil-liberties advocacy group, largely because of the experiences of his father, Rick Hepting, a short-wave-radio enthusiast in the 1950s and 1960s. The elder Mr. Hepting was told by the government that it was reading his mail because he had made contact with a Chinese radio station, the younger Mr. Hepting says.

As a teenager, the elder Mr. Hepting collected so-called QSL cards that acknowledged contact with other radio stations. He was thrilled to receive one from a Chinese radio station he encountered, his son says.

He also began to receive Chinese communist propaganda. Not long after, he received notification from the U.S. government that his international mail was being read, according to the younger Mr. Hepting and his mother, Sandra Miller.

Mr. Hepting says he became interested in the recent government activities after reading about the National Security Agency's warrantless surveillance. He said he grew concerned that the effort was sweeping up communications of a host of customers of the big telephone companies like AT&T, of which he was one.

In pushing to give immunity to telecommunications companies in the AT&T suit, House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio recently said Democrats are opposing immunity to protect their "trial lawyer allies who are seeking to profit" from the lawsuits. President Bush has alluded to the interests of trial lawyers in pushing for immunity.

Mr. Hepting says he's "more than a little personally insulted" by that accusation. "I'm not a trial lawyer. I'm not in this to make a lot of money. I'm in this to make a principled stand," he says. His lawyer,
Kevin Bankston
with the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco, said they are willing to cap the damages requested. Mr. Bankston said it would be enough to be a punishment but "would not financially cripple the company."

Mr. Hepting reflected on his father's experience. "It has a chilling effect," he said. "A real impact when you realize that something completely innocuous and innocent can get you monitored and surveilled by the government."

Mr. Hepting, a network architect at Trapeze Networks and a member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, received a newsletter from the foundation, which discussed an effort to assemble a class-action lawsuit against AT&T. "I was more than a little nervous about getting involved," Mr. Hepting says, knowing the lawsuit could be highly contentious and very public.

The case has highlighted the legal question of whether telecoms should serve as an independent check on the government's surveillance activities.

President Bush said this week that the lawsuits are unfair because phone companies received assurances from the government that their activities were legal. He said lawsuits will discourage companies from helping the government in the future. AT&T spokeswoman Claudia Jones said she couldn't comment on an open legal matter, but said "AT&T is fully committed to protecting our customers' privacy."

Mr. Hepting and the other plaintiffs charge that AT&T gave the government access to its facilities and databases and discloses to the government the contents of its customers' communications as well the records of millions of customers. The U.S. government and AT&T have sought to quash Mr. Hepting's case by arguing that it will reveal national security secrets. They argue that Mr. Hepting and his fellow plaintiffs don't have standing because they can't prove their communications were collected.

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AT&T Suit Has Cold-War Roots

WASHINGTON -- Behind the scenes in the tussle over whether telephone companies can be sued for cooperating with warrantless government surveillance is a 35-year-old computer engineer who lives outside San Francisco.